Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

by James Rollins

  The skull . . .

  Mutt swung his lower body, heaving into a swing, and reached out his free arm. Rocks pelted him, but his hand caught the falling skull. He dragged it to him and hugged it to his chest like a football.

  “What don’t you understand about stop wiggling?” Jones called down to him.

  Mutt showed him the cradled skull. “Thought you might still want this!”

  That shut him up.

  Piece by armored piece, Jones hauled Mutt up. More skeletal bits rained down, but the gold suit of armor held. At last, with a final grunting heave, the professor dragged Mutt back into the burial chamber. The crystal skull rolled out of his grip and across the floor. Gasping and sweating, the professor grabbed it and shoved it into his satchel. He pointed to the exit.

  “Go! Hurry!”

  They scrambled to their feet. Jones dove first into the crawlway. As if he’d done this many times before, the professor moved swiftly through the tunnel. Shimmying inside after him, Mutt felt a great shudder in the mountain—then a massive thunderclap erupted behind him. He turned in time to see the entire burial chamber crack and fall away.

  “Quit gawking, kid!” Jones said.

  Mutt scurried down the crawlway as fast as he could move. More and more of the promontory broke away behind them, trying to drag them down, too. Mutt chased after the professor, who urged him to move faster and faster. With the world falling away at his heels, Mutt needed no additional encouragement.

  At last they reached the tunnel’s end and piled out into a frantic heap.

  The professor helped Mutt to his feet. They stumbled a few steps from the cliff’s edge onto solid ground. Behind them, the promontory stabilized, though some sand still seeped and a few rocks fell. Beyond the cliff, dawn finally approached, turning the dark skies into a mix of pinks and oranges.

  “We made it,” Mutt said.

  “Yes, you did,” said a voice.

  They both turned as a trio of figures stepped around the corner of a crumbling mausoleum. Two were in uniform, carrying rifles. The Russians again. The center figure wore a khaki suit and wide-brimmed Panama hat. He faced the professor with a welcoming smile.

  “Hello, Indy.”

  “Mac . . .”

  Indy shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was.

  Before they could extend their greetings, Indy heard the crunch of boots on rock. He turned to see Colonel Dovchenko step behind Mutt. The Russian swung a blackjack and clubbed the kid in the back of the skull. Mutt dropped like a brick.

  “You bastard,” Indy growled.

  Sneering, Dovchenko kicked Indy to the ground and swung a glancing blow to his skull with the same weapon. Stars danced across Indy’s vision as he fell hard to the sandy dirt. As he struck, the crystal skull rolled from his satchel and landed eye-to-eye with him.

  A shadow fell across him.

  Dovchenko.

  The Russian had picked up a gravestone and hoisted it over Indy’s head.

  “No!” Mac called. “She said she needs him alive!”

  Dovchenko smiled at Indy and heaved the stone straight down.

  Indy winced, but the chunk of gravestone only struck the ground beside his head. Dovchenko strode away, grumbling in Russian. Indy didn’t understand it, but it sounded like a cross between a threat and a promise.

  As the man left, Indy found himself focused on the crystal skull again. The sun rose behind it, shining the first rays of the new day through the crystal. The eyes blazed at Indy. Somewhere deep in the skull, Indy sensed something stirring . . . reaching out for him.

  He opened his own eyes wider.

  Fire filled him.

  Then a hand reached down. He caught a glimpse of a syringe and felt a stinging stab into his neck. A plunger pushed and filled him with darkness, extinguishing the skull’s fire, too.

  He had one last thought.

  Not again.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Iquitos, Peru

  THE SCREECH of a monkey woke him.

  Sensations returned piecemeal: an ache in the shoulders, a scent of wet loam and cinnamon, a pasty thickness of the tongue, a mosquito’s buzz, a dense moistness to the air. Vision blurred and steadied, then blurred again. A camp cot. A tent pole. A hanging lantern.

  He felt his head pulled back by the hair. Liquid fire burned down his throat. He fought, but his head was as heavy as a cannonball. He spotted a bottle with Cyrillic lettering. Vodka. Cheap vodka. The fire hit his stomach and exploded outward along his limbs.

  He struggled and realized he was seated in a chair, tied to it. He tugged at the ropes that bound his wrists, rubbed raw. How many days? He vaguely recalled a steam locomotive, piled with cargo, flashes of jungle, a river ride.

  Where was he?

  Indy lifted his head. He sat in a sparsely furnished camp tent; it was square-cornered, with walls in green-and-black camouflage. The place had military written all over it. Through the mesh windows, it was pitch dark. Nighttime. Somewhere to the left a bonfire crackled and glowed through the tent walls. Shadows shifted in front of it. He heard singing, carousing. From the hop and twirl of shapes, they were even dancing. The boisterous songs revealed the celebrants’ nationality.

  Russian.

  A figure stepped into his sight line. He carried a chair in one hand and the vodka in the other. Dressed in khaki, bare-headed and red-faced, he dropped the chair and sat down in it. He rested the vodka bottle on his knee and smoothed down his mustache as he contemplated his prisoner.

  “Mac . . .” Indy spat with a scowl. He pictured the man ambushing him at the Chauchilla Cemetery. He stared curses at the traitor.

  “Lucky for you I showed up when I did, Indy. Dovchenko wanted to smash your head in back in that cemetery. That’s the third time I saved your life.”

  “Untie me, and I’ll say thanks.”

  Mac leaned back and tilted the chair up on its back legs. He swigged from the bottle with a wince, then sighed. He held up a finger. “Let’s keep track. The first time, you had a Luger pointed at the base of your skull. In fact, that’s how we first met, wasn’t it?”

  “I had the situation under control.”

  A second finger rose. “Then there was Jakarta. Remember the amnesia darts I pulled out of your neck?”

  “Amnesia darts?” Indy crinkled his brow.

  “See, you don’t remember!” Mac shook his head. “And maybe just as well. Take my word for it, you owe me. Owe me big!”

  Indy leaned forward as far as the ropes would allow him, his face hard. “After the war, when you turned traitor—how many names did you give the Reds? How many good men died because of you? What do you owe them?”

  Mac sighed. “I don’t think you see the big picture, mate.”

  “Eventually these ropes are coming off, comrade. And when they do I’m going to break your nose.”

  “Comrade? You actually think I care about flags? Uniforms? Lines on a map? Those all change.”

  “But money doesn’t.”

  “No, even money does, Indy. But gold. That’s forever.” Mac glanced nervously to a reel-to-reel tape deck. It was slowly turning, recording their every word. He lowered his voice and spoke more conspiratorially.

  “And not just gold. A gigantic pile of gold. Forget what the Russians are paying me. It’s nothing compared to what’s at Akator. You know the legends. An entire city of gold. It’s what those bloody conquistadores were after, for God’s sake. We’ll be richer than Howard Hughes.”

  Indy sneered. “Blood money. Every nickel of it.”

  Mac leaned even closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. “I need you to see the angle here, Indy. Be smart and play it right. Remember, just like in—”

  The lantern light flickered as the tent flap behind Indy was pulled back. A night breeze swept through the stifling tent. Someone pushed inside behind him.

  Mac leaned to his ear. “—like in Berlin. Get me?”

  The traitor stood up, a welcoming smile blooming on his fac
e. Beyond the tent, Indy heard the coughing call of a hunting jaguar. Panthera onca. On the fresh breeze, he caught the sweet scent of Victoria amazonia, the night-blooming giant lily pad. He noted the flutter of a bright yellow moth with a long tail—drawn inside by the lantern’s light. A comet moth.

  In his head, Indy cross-referenced the flora and fauna, ranges and locations, trying to calculate where he had been taken.

  Deep Peruvian rain forest.

  If he wasn’t mistaken, he had to be somewhere along the Ucayali River, which meant they were perched at the edge of the darkest part of the forest, where few men ever ventured, and even fewer ever returned. Why were they here?

  The breeze suddenly died as the tent flap dropped. The mysterious visitor stepped into view on Indy’s right. She had changed out of her US Army uniform and into another: gray with black boots and a squared-off cap. A Russian uniform. Showing her true colors at last.

  She did, however, retain one part of her old uniform: the belted scabbard at her side, slung low on her hip.

  Irina Spalko.

  Mac bowed his head slightly. “Dobroi nochi, Colonel Doctor,” he said. “I’ll leave you to your interrogation.”

  She barely noted his acknowledgment as he slipped past her, but Indy caught Mac’s worried glance. Once Mac had left, Spalko stepped forward with her hand on her rapier’s pommel.

  “Dr. Jones, you survive to be of service once again.”

  Indy kept his voice flat. “You know me. Anything I can do to help.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of worlds. You recognize these words, da? It was your own Dr. Oppenheimer . . . after he created the atomic bomb.”

  Indy flashed back to the mushroom cloud in the Nevada desert. “He was quoting the Hindu Bible.”

  “It was nuclear intimidation. But no longer. Now this next level of weapon is ours to have—yours to fear.”

  “Weapon? What weapon?”

  “A mind weapon. A new frontier of psychic warfare. It will bring about Stalin’s dream for this world.”

  Indy glowered at her madness. “Now I see why Oxley put the skull back where he found it. He must have known you were after it.”

  Spalko settled into Mac’s former seat. She picked up Mac’s vodka bottle and poured herself a drink.

  “You may scoff, Dr. Jones, but that skull is no mere deity carving. Surely you knew it the moment you laid your eyes on it—it was not made by human hands.”

  “Then who do you think made it?”

  Spalko lifted one eyebrow, as if to say, Isn’t it obvious?

  “C’mon, sister.”

  She leaned over and removed a blanket from the neighboring camp cot. It had been thrown over a familiar object: the steel coffin from Hangar 51. Its surface glowed with reflected light from the lantern.

  “That body your government found in New Mexico,” Spalko continued, “it wasn’t the first. We’d already dissected two others from similar crash sites in the Soviet Union. Perhaps you remember the Tunguska explosion?”

  Indy sat straighter. He did. In 1908 some mysterious object had crashed to earth near the Tunguska River in Siberia. It had flattened two thousand square miles of trees, with the force of one thousand atomic bombs. The Russians had said it was a meteoric event. Apparently that wasn’t exactly the truth.

  Spalko noted the widening of his eyes and smiled thinly. “The legends about Akator are true, Dr. Jones. From descriptions in the historical texts of the Maya and the Nazca, early man couldn’t nave conceived such a city, much less built it. It was a city of supreme beings with technologies beyond our current comprehension . . . and paranormal abilities beyond anything on this planet.”

  “You gotta be kidding me.”

  Indy wanted to scoff more strongly, but a seed of worry settled into him. He remembered his own short study of the skull. Even in such a brief examination, he knew he held something amazing. The artifact had been cut against the natural planes of the crystal, yet polished so smooth that it felt almost watery to the touch. And then there were the finely crafted details. Indy had to admit it: The skull had to have been carved with a skill beyond modern tools.

  Still, Spalko read the lingering doubt in his face. “Why do you stubbornly choose not to believe your eyes? The New Mexico specimen gave us hope. We dissected it.”

  Indy glanced sharply at her. They had done what?

  She continued, “Unlike the others we’d found, the New Mexico specimen’s skeleton was pure crystal. Including its skull. Though it was much smaller. Perhaps the New Mexico specimen is a distant cousin of the larger skull you found? Maybe the smaller ones were sent to find Akator. Perhaps we’re all searching for the same thing. There’s no other explanation.”

  Indy shook his head. There was no hesitation in his next words. “There’s always another explanation.”

  She refused to listen. Adamancy entered her voice, along with a shine of fervor. “The skull was stolen from Akator in the sixteenth century. By the conquistadores. Whoever returns it—”

  “—to the city’s temple gets control over its power,” Indy finished. “I’ve heard that bedtime story, too, sister. But you’re forgetting one detail.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What if Akator doesn’t exist?”

  She shrugged. “That is a good question, Dr. Jones. One we’ve been trying to answer with the help of your friend—Dr. Harold Oxley.”

  “Ox? He’s here?” Indy sat up straighter.

  She nodded. “But there’s a bit of a problem.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  INDY RUBBED HIS SORE WRISTS as he ducked out of the tent. Two Russian guards in gray uniforms flanked the exit and kept rifles leveled at him. Spalko followed at his back, a Makarova semi-automatic pistol in hand, pointed at his spine.

  They were taking no chances.

  At the door to the tent, Indy stood for a moment, gaining his bearings, chasing the last of the cobwebs out of his head by taking several deep breaths of the fresh breeze. The jungle encircled the camp, its canopy leaning over the clearing. The scent of night flowers and damp loam was carried in the wind as it whispered through the forest like some shadowy hunter. Insects whirred in a constant chorus. A few frogs croaked in counterpoint. The jungle loomed, ancient, forever brooding.

  Unlike what lay ahead of Indy.

  A giant bonfire blazed in the center of the Russian encampment. Flames crackled high, churning smoke toward the dense jungle canopy overhead. Firelight danced shadows all around, warding back the rain forest and its darkly primeval heart. A rutted track led to the campsite, which was crowded with jeeps, trucks, and a giant machine fronted by a pair of horizontal saw blades twice as large as manhole covers.

  Indy eyed the number of Russian forces. Not good. There had to be more than fifty soldiers: cleaning weapons, smoking, carousing with one another. Many were crowded around the blaze, singing in Russian and clapping along.

  A regular Boy Scouts of the Soviet Union jamboree.

  “This way,” Spalko said.

  She led him toward the fire. The two guards fell into step behind them.

  Indy continued his surveillance, looking for some way out of this mess. Ahead, the path cleared for Spalko. Men backed away, voices died down, and cigarettes were ground underfoot. Indy noted the fear with which the soldiers viewed their leader. She had them firmly under her thumb.

  She crossed the camp to the bonfire.

  The singing faltered with Spalko’s arrival. Those who hadn’t seen her started another chorus. A path opened toward the flames. She led Indy to the clearing around the firepit.

  A single figure still danced around its roaring flames. Barefoot, he hopped and twirled, twisted and cavorted. The man’s hair was tangled, greasy, and long. His beard reached his collarbone. He wore a ragged striped poncho that flapped and flared. His pants were muddy and shredded.

  He circled the fire, nearing Indy, spinning to face him—then away again. His cheeks were sunken, his bo
dy skeletal, his limbs emaciated. Still, Indy recognized him.

  “Ox?”

  It couldn’t be.

  Dr. Harold Oxley.

  Deaf to his name, the man danced away, even though the clapping and singing had ended. Indy followed along behind Oxley, trailing him. He tried to reconcile this scrawny, wild man with the prim, buttoned-down professor he had known, a man who had always been as stiff as his starched shirts.

  Indy closed the distance to the professor and stepped in front of him. “Ox! It’s me, Indy, remember?”

  Oxley moved to spin past him. His right arm bounced and twitched in the air as if he were conducting his own orchestra. His eyes darted everywhere, never stopping. His head lolled as if listening to some faraway voice only he could hear.

  Indy grabbed his friend by his thin shoulders and pulled him closer, whispering urgently, “You’re faking it, right, pal? Tell me you’re pulling a fast one on the Reds.”

  The professor shuddered and shivered in his grip, barely constrained. Indy cupped the man’s chin and noted, distantly, that Oxley’s skin burned, even through his scrabbled beard. Indy forced Oxley to face him. The man’s pupils were dilated, despite the bright blaze of firelight. His gaze rolled over Indy with no spark of recognition.

  Words babbled from Oxley’s lips. “Through eyes that last I saw in tears . . .”

  Indy shook him gently. “Listen to me. Your name is Harold Oxley. You were born in Leeds, and you were never . . . never . . .” He looked the professor up and down. “Never this interesting. We went to school together at the University of Chicago. We had pizza together every Tuesday at Gino’s. I’m Indiana—”

  Indy sighed and winced. Seeking another path through to the man, he spoke a name he hoped would jar Oxley’s memory. “Ox! It’s me! Henry Jones Junior.”

  Oxley twisted free ot his grip and flung himself away. His arm thrust out, and he began conducting his ghostly orchestra again.

  Indy turned toward Spalko.

  Mac had joined her, standing with his arms crossed. He wore a concerned expression. But was Mac worried about Oxley or just about his lost City of Gold?